Huh?

Who: Matt and Conor
Where: Lakeside
When: Afternoon

Matt had been out on the lake all day, looking for Ashley's body. And had, unsurprisingly, found absolutely nothing. He'd hoped - he'd really hoped - that he'd find her. He hated the idea of her body being out there, but nothing at all and eventually he'd rowed back towards the campsite. That had been the side effect of today - the one good thing. Matt Ambry had learned to row. When he'd left this morning, he was still at the 'almost losing oars' stage - when he'd returned, he was fairly decent. What he was unsure of, though, was how to land the damn thing - and in the end he'd just gone for pointing himself at the shore and rowing as hard as he could, ramming the small boat up onto the shore.

Conor liked to think of himself as a patient man. This, of course, wasn't necessarily true, but he certainly wasn't of the school of thought that required immediate gratification. After moving pews and rearranging the chapel with Zania, Conor had felt a tightness growing in his chest and waved off duty, at least for a short break. Fifteen minutes, he'd promised, or perhaps thirty if he felt the need once out of the close walls of the chapel. He had no romantic fantasies about places like that; they heralded sin, pain, and death, and had little to say about anything he enjoyed, such as climbing cliff-faces or diving off of buildings. Begging off hadn't been difficult, since he'd actually put in a fair amount of effort -- and on an empty stomach. Conor took the opportunity to better acquaint himself with his surroundings. If he was going to have to sleep in the woods again, he was going to find a more appropriate place. Coming upon a lake, he noted the man trying to force a rowboat on shore, and moved without thinking. This was common in the Ozarks, finding people incapable of handling the violent currents. In a place like that, you helped without hesitation, because it was never clear when it would happen to you. Conor reached forward, catching the edge and hauling the boat securely onto the ground. "Afternoon delight?" he suggested dryly, raising a brow.

Matt stowed the oars and gave the guy who'd helped him an appreciative grin. "Eh?" he asked, confused by the question - but that never bothered him. He jumped out of the bows of the boat, landing on the shore and thankfully not getting wet. Not that it would really matter - not like he had footwear to dry off or anything. He'd caught the sun a little during the day - a pink tinge to his otherwise white skin, but he seemed not in the least bit bothered about the fact he was wandering round in his pyjamas. Or that his hair was like a wildman's (it was very rarely anything else). Or that he hadn't shaved for a couple of days. He was irritated by his lack of progress, but only in a mild way - this had been going on for so long that he doubted he'd ever find anything. It didn't mean that he would stop looking, but it was hard to keep up with it getting him down - it wasn't in his nature.

None of these people had shoes. Conor knew they'd abandoned the house in the fire, but it always astonished him that people didn't have a contingency plan -- he always had a bag packed, but that was more for whim and whimsy than practicality, he could admit. The man was slightly sunburned and looked distracted, displaying it clearly with his lack of understanding. Conor personally couldn't think of a good reason to be rowing around on a lake in the middle of the day when there were things to be done, but then, perhaps this was one of them. He shook his head, deciding it wouldn't be sensible or anything but futile to repeat or explain himself. "What's all this?" he asked, indicating the boat with one hand as he reached into his pocket to tap out a clove. He was only glad he carried a couple packs on him at a time, since he wasn't actually sure he'd be getting his things back any time soon. He lit up, raising a brow at the man.

Looking for the dead body of an ex-housemate in the lake that I've only seen across the cameras that nobody knows I have access to but that came up on my computer in the house that has now burnt to the ground. No - no way to explain that. "I was looking for a fresh water source. Maybe a stream or something around the lake - and it's quicker than walking," he lied, easily. Yes, that sounded a lot more sane and rational.

The hesitation wasn't overlong, exactly, but the answer made Conor narrow his eyes anyway. He hadn't walked all that far around the area, and neither did he know what was happening with other groups on the site, but it seemed difficult to believe that Lina would have anyone go off alone. From what he'd heard, she was very much in favor of working in teams. Even so, that didn't account for the fact that he might've gone off on his own; Conor was fast learning that many people here were just as willing to wander as they were to talk. Besides, if there was a lake, he wouldn't be surprised if a source was nearby. Conor shrugged, pulling on his clove and drawing smoke down into his lungs. "Thought I heard a stream back by the shed," he offered. He'd passed it on his way over, but it was so clear that the man couldn't have missed it if he'd come from that direction.

Matt didn't have to lie at that news - he hadn't known about it. "Yeah?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Didn't know about that - but then I left first thing. Figured I'd get a headstart - not like there was breakfast waiting or anything, right? Talking of - you know if there's any food materialised? Apart from the chocolate they left us? Which, I mean - nice snack and all, but hardly food for a growing man, right?" he said with a beaming smile that seemed to come out of nowhere. God, but he could kill for a banana right now. Or an apple - a nice, crunchy apple. Matt had always had a weakness for fruit.

"Yeah," Conor agreed, pulling at the clove, perhaps the seventh just today, and realizing in the next instant the reason for it. He had purposefully been mistaking genuine hunger for smoke-hunger, and the other man had brought it too close to the surface to ignore. Conor grimaced. He hadn't even seen evidence of the chocolate, which would've been passable when his other option was nothing. The other man didn't look like a boy, although he supposed they were indeed always growing in one way or another. He shrugged. "Can't complain," Conor settled on, the only idiom he could recall -- or perhaps it was the only one he could be bothered with -- in current company. "They're still hunting, last I heard." For what good it may do the rest of them.

"Well, hopefully they'll come back with something then," Matt said, acknowledging his own hunger, but he knew he'd survive - he'd been through worse, after all. Those days back in February when they were trapped on the fourth floor with no food, little water and the walls closing in around them. At least here they could hunt - not that Matt would have any idea where to start with that, but he had confidence that someone else would. That was just the kind of guy he was. "You're new - right?" he asked. Not that it was really phrased as a question - he knew the guy was new. He'd never seen him on the cameras. And Matt saw everyone on the cameras. "Did you wake up to the fire, or are they still putting people in even though we have nowhere to live?"

Conor couldn't say much to that, because he wasn't actually sure of the capabilities of the rest of the people in the experiment. From what he'd heard, they could manage, but he wouldn't hold out on hope until he had a reason. No use setting himself up for disappointment. He exhaled smoke, nodding once at the other man. "Conor," he said, and flicked ash to the side. His lips quirked; apparently he was quite the talk, having landed when there was nowhere to land. He found it odd, yes, but nothing much of consequence. He was here, so he may as well enjoy it. "The fire was long finished when I arrived." He didn't bother correcting the man on not having a place to live; technically, thus far, he was living just fine on the land. But he didn't say anything because he had to agree, it definitely wasn't his preference.

"Matt," the lanky Brit supplied, holding out a hand. "Nice to meet you - how you finding the going so far?" he asked, because 'welcome to hell' seemed kinda stale and old. And everyone was using it nowadays, from what he'd seen. So out the window it went. No point keeping with something so passe.

"Well, I'm not dead or particularly pissed off yet," Conor pointed out with a sly grin. Everyone seemed to think it would happen eventually, so perhaps they were right, but as of now, he wasn't bothered. Zania had made a point of that more than once, either impressed or amused, he couldn't tell with her yet. "But I am assured I will be." He hadn't woken up in a burning house; he hadn't lost all his belongings -- oh, he'd lost most, but not all; he hadn't been born to believe in the generosity or kindness of the human spirit. This was working to his advantage.

Matt didn't return the grin - which was unusual, for he generally smiled easily. But he didn't find jokes about death particularly funny right about now. Not when he'd spent the last week looking for a body of an ex-housemate, he didn't. "You really haven't been here for long," he commented. "Remind me to ask you how you're getting on in a week. I'm going looking if there's anything to eat - you coming?" he asked, upnodding in the direction of the campsite.

Conor actually had to prevent himself from rolling his eyes. He was starting to get annoyed by the warnings. Did the whole lot of them not realize that they were all saying essentially the same thing? Fine, he got the point -- this place was horrible, he was going to regret ever signing up for this before he left, et cetera. Until then, he didn't see the point in the fear mongering. Conor hoped Matt forgot to ask him how he was in a week. He flicked ash absently, shrugging at the invitation. "Sure." He doubted anything had surfaced yet, but he needed to be getting back anyway. Zania would probably be looking for him.

"Great, so where you from?" Matt asked, heading up towards the campsite, grabbing a long strand of grass on the way and starting to shred it absently between his fingers. He was definitely a guy who needed to keep active at all times, unless there was something which really took his attention - and then it had all of it, to the exclusion of everything else. Unfortunately, today, there was no such thing - well, not since he got off the lake, anyhow.

"Manhattan," Conor said neutrally. The majority of the people he had met thus far were foreigners, which he found interesting. He wondered what had drawn them to the States and, more specifically, to this experiment. Everyone seemed on the run from something; he might actually be the only one that signed up because he was bored. Of course, now that they were here, those he'd met seemed bored; that must've been the case, because Conor found this getting-to-know-you tripe interminably dull. It was like being in polite society, and for the most part, he'd hated that. Except when he was sullying debutantes. "You?" he asked, feeling strangely obligated. "Limey, isn't that what they used to say?" And was it still politically incorrect, or had it ever been?

Matt laughed. "Yeah limey - cos the sailors on our ships used to eat pickled limes to stop them getting scurvy. I'm from Milton Keynes, which you'll never have heard of and you're lucky for that - fucking depressing place that it is. But it's about fifty miles north of London." Just to orient the guy. He didn't seem at all offended, or even thrown by the use of the word - it was just another name to him.

Actually, he had heard of Milton Keynes, but only by fact of having been there once, accidentally, while traveling in England. Conor had gotten distracted and the platform his train had been on was switched, and he'd ended up in the middle of Bumfuck Depressing Nowhere before he could get out and had nearly gotten himself a ₤300 fine to boot. As if it wasn't punishment enough, turning up in Milton Keynes. He gave Matt a nod, tapping the ash from the clove. He didn't figure he had to explain where Manhattan was. It was par for the course for Brits to know more about Americans, even involving their geography, than vice versa, though Conor was at least suitably educated. "I can appreciate London," he said. "Rains more than I like, but then, I always did hate the Midwest," he said thoughtfully.

"Well, you visit Britain, you get rain - it kinda goes with the whole 'living on a small temperate island' thing," Matt commented. "Never been to the midwest - isn't it all just cornfields and scary Christians who think that the USA is the only country in the entire world?" he asked, not caring much if he was being offensive. He didn't have to ask about Manhattan - he doubted there was anyone, anywhere who hadn't heard of Manhattan, but that was the influence of film on the world for you. He knew kids that couldn't hold a maop the right way up who knew where Manhattan was - as long as you asked them to describe it, rather than point it out on a map, of course.

Climatology had never particularly interested him, although he could make guesses if need be about how the weather might affect certain areas. Even so, unless it directly pertained to him, he didn't want to. Conor looked up at Matt, grinned at the comment. Perhaps the stereotype was one widely-held, then, and not just by many of those who lived on the coasts. Conor had been to the Midwest, had found that generally, it wasn't awful, but as with everywhere else in the world, there existed madmen and radicals. "For the most part," he agreed wickedly. Hell, who was he to stop the rumors? "Soy has grown to be the second largest crop," he added, as if that had any bearing on their conversation. Although, he wasn't certain what did, so he supposed the tangent was acceptable.

The second comment completely threw Matt, but then he'd felt like any control he had on this conversation had been slipping for the past few minutes anyway. "Soy?" he asked, frowning a little. How the hell had they ended up talking about crops anyhow? "Right, well.... That's... nice for them," he said, looking entirely lost.

Apparently the conversation had no particular direction, but things could still be out of place. It was the sort of social awkwardness Conor had never achieved, always seamless and at ease with himself and therefore around other people as well. "I'm sure it is," he agreed, slightly amused at Matt's inability to return with something or at least launch to something else. "So you spent your day circling a lake looking for a stream," he said conversationally, attempting to get them back to a topic the other man could follow. "Ever find one?" He hadn't asked; he'd just assumed not.

"A few," Matt replied, easily. He'd seen a few out, after all he'd been sticking fairly close to the shore, figuring that her body probably would have washed up somewhere by now. He couldn't search the whole lake, after all - it was far too big - but he had to feel like he was doing something. "I was going to go and tell Lina about them, though most of them are too far away to be of any use." It occurred to Matt that the one thing this experiment had taught him was how to lie with ease, he did it smoothly and without thinking these days - so used to dissembling. The question was whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Conor blinked. He had decided to believe that there might've been streams around the lake, but he still wasn't clear on the motive, because he knew inherently that it wasn't true. Conor had gotten very good in the past few years at determining how and when people lied, and though it didn't bother him so much that Matt wasn't being honest, he did wonder at the reason for it. Conor wasn't exactly the judgmental sort, although he supposed that wasn't obvious at first meeting. Still, he would let it be. He hadn't any choice, really. And besides, perhaps he was overthinking it; perhaps he was suspicious of those he'd met because they insisted to say things he didn't like. "Everyone needs to talk to Lina," Conor agreed. "Seems to me she'd have been more useful giving orders on site than going out hunting." If she hadn't been too paranoid to give the job away without going to supervise. If that was her undoing, Conor would be pissed, but unsurprised. "So tell me how she got to be house authority," he suggested.

"She was voted in," Matt told him as they approached the campsite. There was the smell of woodsmoke and possibly something that was food drifting on the slight breeze and the lanky Brit picked up his pace a little, his stomach grumbling. "Before Lina, a bloke called Everrett was in charge - ex policeman. But there were complaints about him - some people in the house had been attacked and he basically did fuck all about it. Push came to shove, he stepped down, the scientists asked for volunteers and out of them, Lina got the job when it was put to house vote. And here we are, Lina's in charge through the wonderful powers of democracy. Good a way as any other of doing it."

"What, this is a democracy?" Conor asked, raising a brow. That was interesting. From what Zania had mentioned, he wouldn't have guessed that. Someone in control, in his opinion, ought to have a better handle on what was happening between the people, but then, he definitely couldn't make a judgment about that. He'd never even seen the house in which they had lived, much less experienced it. Besides, according to Matt, Lina did actually do things when alleged crimes occurred, so he supposed he couldn't complain, and he certainly didn't expect anything more. "I suppose," he agreed, though his voice was low in contemplation. This was certainly different than he had anticipated it being. "Although I don't know how much good it does in the long run. All I've heard about is the control the scientists exert," Conor said blandly.

"I wouldn't say that it was always a democracy," Matt averred. "It might be more accurate to say that we had a scientists-invoked day of 'choose your dictator'. From what I've heard, and from reading back on the journals - before they all went up in smoke along with everything else, of course, there were experiments into true democracy early on, but the end result is that fuck all got done, because nobody wanted to do anything, or, more accurately, everyone wanted to do everything their way, which wasn't the same as anyone else's opinion. Plus nobody wanted to be seen to be coming down hard on anyone who stepped out of line and... Well, from what I saw it was a whole bunch of people sitting around bitching about things, about what was going on, about what wasn't getting done, but at teh same time refusing to lift a finger to help themselves." Matt rolled his eyes - after all, he'd sat and watched a lot of that. It had been pathetic, really.

In Conor's experience, nothing was ever a democracy, even when it purported to be, but that was hardly the point. Governments looked pretty on paper, but failed in execution, because people had agendas that governments -- or at least the people that drafted them up -- didn't plan for. In any event, having forced democracy was just as well as having voluntary democracy, or a facade of democracy, whatever one would consider it. "The human condition," Conor remarked with a grim smile. "They say we're set apart from animals by our ability to feel profound emotion, but I think it's the ability to complain that really draws the line." Conor was much more animalistic, in that sense; he didn't complain often, because complaining never did anything. He usually set about things with a plan in mind and adjusted as problems arose; frequently, he didn't have a choice. A man couldn't tell a river current to go left and avoid crashing into a series of rocks, so he'd better know how to fucking maneuver his boat. "I hear I can't expect anything from this experiment. Any thoughts on that?"

Matt considered the question. "Well, that all depends on what you expect really, doesn't it?" he suggested. "If you expect a free ride and this to be like some holiday resort, you're shit outta luck. Course, if you expect it to be not knowing what's going to happen from one day to the next, where people that you've met are suddenly permanently gone and you don't know where or when. Where you might wake up one morning to something you've always wanted, or equally something you're always dreaded. Well, you can definitely expect that," Matt assured them as they walked into the camp. Yes, there was definitely something cooking over the fire - rabbits by the looks of it.

Blinking, he looked at the other man, having just been told perhaps the most straightforward thing anyone had said all day. It was extremely helpful, at least in the sense that he knew that even if Matt would rather keep certain things to himself, he had an eye on other peoples' best interests -- well, Conor's at least. "Thanks," he said, sounding slightly surprised, because he was. He hadn't expected that. "That's very useful to know," he added, and gave the man a small smile. They were nearing camp and he noted the smell of food, loosely construed, apparently rabbits. "Looks like they had some luck today." That was bolstering, anyway. He glanced at the other man. "Ever eaten hare?"

"Hare, no - rabbit, yeah a few times. Not my favourite meat, but somehow right now, I'm none too picky," Matt told him. Right now, he'd eat almost anything. "But, I guess I should go see if I can find Lina first - be a good boy and all. It was nice meeting you, Conor - sure I'll see you around."

Conor had eaten both and liked neither. Fortunately, he wasn't hungry enough that he'd feel obligated, and he wasn't picky enough that he wouldn't eat when he did get hungry. "Can't say I blame you," Conor agreed, shrugging slightly. He would subsist on cloves and his own tendency to forget to eat on a regular basis. "Ah, of course. You're a better man than I," he said with a laugh, and put his hands in his pockets. He would find Lina later, get another assignment. In the meanwhile he'd do menial tasks. "Nice meeting you as well. Let me know if you ever need any help docking that boat," he joked, and ashed his clove. In the midst of all the strange conversation, he'd practically forgotten about it.